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Introduction I am currently working as an inservice faculty associate for Field Programs, in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. Previously I taught in the public school system in Vancouver, most recently in a wonderful grade 4/5 class at Bayview Elementary school. Prior to that I was the Coordinator of the University Transition Program, Canada's only radical acceleration, early entrance to university program for highly gifted adolescents. While I throughly enjoyed that position, getting to know students, working with parents and dedicated teachers, and constantly learning new things, in the spring of 2006 I decided that it was time to take a break from Gifted Education. I left with a number of significant memories and new skills; perhaps the most unusual one being my certification as an open water scuba diver. With that I was able to dive off of Magnetic Island in Australia in the summer of 2005 with my two older children and their friends. I'm looking forward to more dives, including, hopefully a chance to dive in Mexico where I'll get to see turtles from a whole new perspective. I've been quite happily married for 25 years to my best friend Robert. I haven't convinced him to dive with me yet, but we do take regular motorcycle and/or bicycle trips together and never have problems agreeing on dinners to make, places to visit, movies to watch and even books we enjoy. Each summer he and I take at least one special trip together. We have travelled to Crater Lake in Oregon and then back up along the Oregon Coast on our motorcycles. Another year we circumvented Washington State until we found ourselves battling headwinds driving west along the Columbia River, glad to be on motorcycles at least instead of bicycles. We ended up coming home through Mt Ranier Park and then back up the coast. It too was an amazing trip. Two summers ago, after returning from our drive with our youngest daughter through some of the more terrifying but beautiful "beef highways" in the outback of Australia, Robert and I took a few days to bicycle the Sunshine Coast circle route up through Powell River and across to Comox. If you haven't done it, it is one of the more exhilarating cycles anywhere. Robert and I have three wonderful children. Our eldest is in her second year at UBC Medical School after a year out of school now to work with a fabulous group of doctors at B.C. Women's Hospital, followed by four months of traveling through Southeast Asia and Australia. Our son is studying Arts at UBC. He did a one year exchange in Melbourne and like his older sister, definitely has the itch to travel; our youngest child is in her first year of high school and loving it. She is an avid soccer player and already a real technology wiz.
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Life-Long Learning Plan I love to learn. To date I have my Bachelor of Education with specialities in Intermediate Education and Psychology, and a Master of Arts Degree in Social and Educational Studies. My Master's thesis was an ethnographic study of homeschooling in British Columbia (in the late 1980s), research which led to my interest in highly gifted students, and thus more course work in Gifted Education. Most recently I have completed a Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning in a Technology Environment at SFU. Currrently I am interested in continuing to pursue my passion for using computers in education, particularly developing e-portfolios because I believe in their potential for helping students to take responsibility for their own learning. My deeper interest in this is in looking at how education can be and is being transformed with the digital age. I'm concerned about what underlying values our students are learning and how these will play out in this global age. This has led me to pick up the facilitor role for SFU's new Teaching and Learning for Global Perspectives graduate diploma program through which I am currently immersed in learning more of the theory underlying global education. The opportunity to work closely with the instructors and students in this program is exciting, enlightening and empowering in terms of how to better promote social justice and sustainability in our schools. Personally, I am working hard at learning to speak to Spanish. I like to think that some opportunity to live and work in a Latin American country is still in the cards for me. For fun, when I'm not trying out new things on my computer, studying spanish, walking or playing with friends or family, I love to read, do puzzles and play with math.
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